


Soulmates and Westerns

by sonyashnyky



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonyashnyky/pseuds/sonyashnyky
Summary: Mei's soulmate sounds like one of the men from those old movies, but none of those gruff cowboys exist anymore. Right?





	Soulmates and Westerns

**Author's Note:**

> "What if the voice inside your head is your soulmate's" turns into "imagine Jesse McCree speaking Chinese"  
> You're welcome  
> Part of MeiCree Week 2017 Prompt: AU

Maybe that's why she was drawn to those movies.

As a teenager, Mei couldn't figure it out. Couldn't decipher the strange boy's accent that echoed in her head. The person it belonged to being forced to speak perfect Mandarin despite probably residing in another country entirely.  
Was this really the voice of her soulmate?  
The voice that soothed her before each test, reminding her of basic elements and equations it knew she knew. Assuring her that she was more than any insults the other kids taunted and teased her with, pointing out her thick glasses and thicker hips.

Growing older, hearing his voice crack and lower, only proved to be more confusing.

It was a fluke when she was introduced to those old American Westerns, the ones with cowboys and outlaws roaming the wide open deserts.  
Men with scruffy facial hair and wry expressions, hardened by the lawlessness of their world, far from that of her native Xi'an. Her heart skipped when she finally heard them speak. The similar long drawl and shortened words so familiar to her mind. The voice that she fell in love with, even if she hadn't known that it was her beloved's.

But there was something that really didn't make sense.

These were movies made well over 100 years ago, depicting historical context that was even older than that. Was she to believe that her soulmate was not only on the other side of the world, but had been dead for some 300 years?

She always had the impression that he was a few years younger, too...

Still she continued to watch when she could, enamored by rough boots on wooden saloon floors, thinking of the day that her own cowboy would hold her close to his warm skin.

When Mei had joined Overwatch, part of her secretly hoped that this was her chance. The opportunity to find her soulmate despite relegating the search in favor of logic and understanding. To be fair, her studies never really took her to places that looked like the American Southwest and climatologists rarely double as gunslinging vigilantes.

Though there was no harm in hoping.

No harm in imagining him greeting her in the Swiss headquarters.  
Imagining him waiting for her to return from her multiyear study.  
Imagining him rescuing her from a frozen coffin on the edge of the world.

 

After a few months and an offer from her friend Winston, Mei decided to join his operative. A chance to find information on the old Ecopoints and extract any information that might still be there. There was no point reliving what had happened in the past.  
And there was no point being tortured by a voice in her mind, low and worn by time and tobacco, that she was never destined to meet.

Gibraltar was far from the buzzing silence of Antarctica, something that Mei appreciated when she landed at the abandoned Watchpoint with Snowball and her Endothermic Blaster. A change of pace fitting for her new life that had been thrust into the future. Even her beloved seemed at ease, laughing heartily at-- wait.

"The name's McCree. And who do I owe the pleasure, darlin'?"

Mei froze like a statue in place, staring at the man who was speaking to her from his spot against the wall, cigarillo smoldering between his lips. The hat over his long hair. The scruffy beard over his jaw.  
The serape.  
The revolver at his hip.  
The _voice_.

Blush began to grow on her cheeks as she continued to stare, caught up in his outfit and demeanor. Wondering how a man like him was destined to be _her_ soulmate. Quietly beckoning for him to speak again so she could prove her thoughts wrong.

"Y'alright?' He inched closer, holding the cigarillo in his metal prosthetic as he pulled his hat up over his face, "I apologize if ya don't want me callin' ya--"

It was him. That was the voice that grew and changed and stayed with her for all those decades. Kept her company at the lowest points of her life.

Here he was.

"Sorry! Mei. I'm Mei! Uh... Don't worry, please!" Pity settled in her stomach, thinking of the poor man dealing with her broken English and funny accent for so many years.  
Or worse.  
What if her voice was never in his thoughts at all?

She'd find out soon enough, watching his own face flush over in shock and slight embarrassment, staring down at her big brown eyes.

He laughed, shaking his head with a warm smile and bringing the cigar back up to his lips to take a long, slow draw.

"Y'mind sayin' somethin' like 'justice ain't gonna dispense itself'?"

**Author's Note:**

> Wasn't allowed to write a hanahaki Meicree fic. This was the next best thing aside from 8 horrible pages of male stripper McCree giving Mei a lapdance
> 
> You're going to have to rip the headcanon that Mei loves cheesy Westerns from my cold, dead hands
> 
> Apologies for mistakes and utterly gross, dumb fluff. I've been fighting a cold and this was written between naps and coughing


End file.
